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We could stretch what we have, but we have big plans — and we need your support to see them through.

This year alone, our advocacy team has logged 9,404 cases, up 29% from a year ago. That’s a lot of consumer problems and hours of hard work.

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That project can only happen if we get through this fall. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit today. Help us finish the job.

Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

Resort fees have been “dead” for a year. Did anyone notice?
The FTC’s fee rule has required hotels and booking sites to put the full price in the first number an American traveler sees, with taxes and optional add-ons the only things allowed to appear later. It stops at the border, so a room booked on a non-U.S. site sits outside the whole system.

Rising hotel taxes need better disclosure. Here’s the fix.
Topeka’s transient guest tax rises to 8.5% on Jan. 1 to help fund tourism marketing, a theater and a planned downtown ice rink, and the deputy mayor has noted that residents don’t pay it unless they stay in a hotel. The hotel industry generated $85.1 billion in taxes last year, and your folio still reports the whole stack on a single line marked “taxes.”

Your hotel room isn’t guaranteed. Here’s the fine print they’re hoping you won’t read.
Omer Malik reserved a king room on a low floor at a German chain hotel because he thinks about exits and stairwells for a living, and the front desk told him at midnight that a guaranteed room type belongs to elite members. Hotels have stretched run-of-house assignment, once a discount option, across full-price bookings, and a confirmation now commits the property to little more than a bed configuration.

Help! My $1,866 Lenovo Yoga is an expensive paperweight
Tracey Croisier’s $1,866 Lenovo Yoga 9 started dropping from 100 percent to 30 percent battery in two hours less than a year after she bought it, and an in-home technician replaced the battery and the motherboard without fixing it. Six repair tickets later the laptop was peaking at 134 degrees, and a Lenovo representative suggested she turn it off during her 10-mile drive to class.

Help! Swiss bumped us to the back of the plane, and now our refund is gone
Mila Schoun paid $3,274 for premium economy from Miami to Prague, and Swiss moved him and his wife to economy for the long leg home, a downgrade worth $165 under European rules. The airline told him he had already collected an Easy Cash card at the Zurich airport, and he had never seen one.

Experian said his credit was unfrozen. So why couldn’t he buy a car?
Robert Boisvert asked Experian to lift a credit freeze so he could finance a car, mailed two certified letters with copies of his ID and his utility bills and waited three months. Experian told our advocates the freeze had come off the day he asked, and the only letter that reached him said his account was inactive.

Travelers are facing more entry and exit fees than ever. Here’s what you need to know.
New Zealand charged Brian Clark about $70 to enter before he’d booked a room, Britain has raised the price of its entry permit twice since launch and the United States nearly doubled its own fee to $40.27. Fake government portals now outrank the real ones in search results, and the colleague who clicked the first result paid a markup for the same 72-hour wait.

Rental car companies have started running returned vehicles past AI scanners that flag every dent and scratch, and the damage bills have gone out to customers who assumed their credit card had them covered. Whether the card pays first or only after your own auto insurer does changes what you end up owing. Did your card pay a rental damage claim, or did it hand you back to your insurer? Tell me what happened on Backchannel.